Dialogus cum Nestorio

Of the same holy Cyril, a dialogue with Nestorius, that the holy Virgin is Theotokos and not Christotokos. {Nestorius.} When divine Scripture speaks of the birth of Christ from the Virgin Mary or of his death, nowhere is it found to be set down as of God, but of Christ or of the Lord or of Jesus, since these three terms are indicative of the two natures, sometimes of this one, sometimes of that. I mean something like this: When the Apostle indicates to us the birth of Christ from the Virgin, he says, "God sent forth his own Son, born of a woman"; he did not say, "He sent forth the God Logos." He takes the name that indicates the two births, that is, God and man, since Christ is twofold. For the Virgin gave birth to a Son of God, inasmuch as he said, "But you are gods and sons of the Most High, all of you." Hence we have learned from Scripture to say Christotokos, Kyriotokos, anthropotokos, but we were never taught to call the holy Virgin Theotokos. {Cyril.} Isaiah cries out in the Spirit, saying, "Behold, the virgin will conceive in her womb and bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel," which is interpreted, "God with us." Therefore the one born is God, whether you wish it or not. {Nest.} The angel said to Joseph, "Arise, take the child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and stay there until I tell you"; he did not say, "Take God and his mother." {Cyr.} But the archangel Gabriel says to the Virgin, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Therefore, the child born from you shall be called holy, son of the Most High. {Nestorius.} The Apostle said: He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, which is our body that he put on, where he advanced in wisdom and stature and grace before God and men, as a man of the Lord. {Cyril.} Everything born from flesh is flesh; but this does not negate the wonder of the birth. For just as God gives birth in a divine manner, so too the God-bearing Virgin gave birth in the flesh to the God Logos from God. {Nestorius.} Every mother gives birth to that which is consubstantial with herself; therefore she is not his mother unless he himself is consubstantial with her. For how could she be mother of him who is of a substance foreign to her? {Cyril.} We have been taught to confess one Son from the Virgin and from the Holy Spirit, consubstantial with the mother as with the Father, as the Fathers have said. {Nestorius.} I separate the natures, but unite the worship, since God is inseparable from what is seen; therefore I do not separate the honor. {Cyril.} He who separates the natures speaks of two sons, not believing the Scripture which says that the Logos became flesh. {Nestorius.} Paul says that Jesus became high priest and apostle of our confession, being faithful to the one who made him, offering himself as a sacrifice for himself as for the people; whence he is appointed high priest in matters concerning God. {Cyril.} Paul says: Christ, once offered to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time without sin. And again: He committed no sin, and there was no deceit in his mouth; and behold, he offers himself for us.

See then, he did not offer it for himself, but for the people. {Nestorius.} He himself says: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will live through me, just as I live through the Father who sent me." Whom then do you eat, heretic? The divinity or the humanity? For Christ did not say, "He who eats my divinity," but "my flesh." {Cyril.} I for my part partake in faith of the life-giving flesh of the life-giving Word; for the Savior said: "Those who eat of this bread will never taste death for eternity; but those who partake unworthily will be judged through their disobedience." {Nestorius.} The Lord sent me and his Spirit; the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me; and therefore he says: "God, your God, anointed you with oil of gladness beyond your fellows." Understand then the anointed one, acknowledge the anointer, and venerate the temple because of the one dwelling in it. {Cyril.} I confess one Son from the Holy Spirit and from Mary the Virgin, from two natures; I do not divide the one into two. {Nestorius.} How can you say he is ignorant of the hour, which the Son does not know, unless only the Father knows it? Or how, knowing, does he deny it? Or, not knowing, how is he called wisdom and power of God, he who partakes of ignorance? {Cyril.} The Son of God is not ignorant of the hour, knowing all things and having the Father in himself, just as he himself said: "No one knows the Father except the Son; only he knows the nature of the Father before all things." And does the Son of God not know the end of the age? Let it not be so.

But the Son by grace is ignorant, but not the Son by nature; by grace we are ignorant of everything, knowing nothing about the ends of the age. {Nestorius.} By nature we hunger and thirst and sleep, not suffering this by choice, but subject to the necessity of nature. What then? Will God be found to follow compulsory laws? Far from it. {Cyril.} We indeed hunger and thirst and sleep by nature, not by choice, but enslaved to the necessity of nature; but He does so not by necessity, but by choice; for from five loaves he fed five thousand, and from seven again four thousand; He Himself said: "No one takes my soul from me, but when I wish, I take it; and no man can do this, except Christ alone." {Nestorius.} Do you say that the Son suffered? Then the Father also suffered; but if you say that the Father did not suffer, you have made the Son of a different substance from Him. {Cyril.} I neither call the Father passible, nor the Son impassible; but the Divine is impassible, because it is also incorporeal; but the Lord is passible on account of the flesh. {Nestorius.} I do not say that the Word became flesh, nor that He suffered; for the Divine is impassible, and the impassible is above sufferings; but the flesh is passible and mortal, a human nature. {Cyril.} We also confess that the Divine is impassible, but through the flesh He underwent suffering; whence, "Christ suffered in the flesh for us"; and "Christ" is not a name alien to God; for the apostle Paul says: "From whom Christ is, who is God over all, blessed unto the ages. Amen.